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I come from a family that worships ACADEMIA. Both of my parents were also musicians. My father played accordian and the organ. My mother sang soprano and could shatter glass. She worshipped Maria Von Trapp and even corresponded with her. (Obviously, the first play I ever saw was "The Sound of Music.") My mother was possessed. She wanted to turn her 10 offspring into another Von Trapp family. Many instruments were bought and tried and abandoned. My brothers had no ear for music. <P>One day, my parents heard their 7-year-old daughter playing the organ. She had taught herself to read music. This was perhaps the most unfortunate thing the child could have done. The parents rejoiced, "We have a musician among us!" They sent her for music lessons. Every week the child traveled to a nearby college to be tortured by an elderly nun, who even though legally blind, had perfect aim with her pencil on the child's fingers at each mistake. The child had initially loved music. She was concurrently learning to play the flute with the rest of her class in the 4th grade by an inspired, progressive nun who thought all children could be musicians. The child also wanted to take piano from another nun at her grade school, a merry, laughing creature who made her students look forward to recitals.<P>But no, the child went, alone, forlorn, miserable, to the elderly finger-rapping nun at the college. Once the nun said, "Find the mistake you made. We'll sit here on this bench together until you find it." So the child, equally stubborn, sat on the bench for the next 30 minutes, then put on her coat, and went home. <P>Meanwhile, the child took trips to the little neighborhood library every Saturday, where she sat on the floor, mesmerized by the pictures of exquisite ballerinas. She wished and she asked. But her parents,like many, believed that music was academic. Dance was not. And they had INVESTED in this one musical child. Eventually, they tried to appease the child by giving her a certificate for 10 lessons to an expensive, prestigious but bull-s__t school in a high rent building. The teacher pawned the child off on an assistant the same age as the child because the class was learning their recital piece. <P>The child never forgot about dance. But there was little she could do because she was putting every penny she earned towards private school tuition and other expenses. When she was 18 years old, she saw a college dance department production and was TAKEN. She immediately enrolled, even though the school had a policy of requiring its incoming freshmen to already be proficient at dance. The girl worked hard. (She cried a lot and hurt a lot too.) Technique was tough, but she had a good mind for music and choreography and history (no accident -- the "academic" stuff). She also auditioned, by accident, for a national touring troupe that was looking for singer/dancers. She sang one song and was immediately asked to start rehearsing. She sang and hoofed and toured, and even became dance captain, because she had a patient way and an analytical mind that could break steps down and make them easy for both singer/dancers and dancer/singers. This job gave her plenty of stage experience and paid for college. <P>But she also suspected in her heart of hearts that was she was mostly doing on stage was SCHLOCK. Her teachers and most of her classmates felt this way too. And, of course, being on the road a great deal meant that she had to work that much harder when she got back to class from touring. And by the same token, when she was back in class, she sometimes had to forfeit certain trips and performances, getting a substitute, which eventually cost her her job along with a highly paid tv commercial. Sometimes she felt she couldn't win.<P>One summer, the girl got away. She went to a beautiful area of the state (she'd never been in anything but urban settings) where there was a lovely resort with a plush Chicago clientele. She was paid to wear gowns and play the piano four hours a night. When she wasn't doing this, she took it easy in a little cottage in the woods where she sometimes practiced her music, or she swam, or she laid out in the sun on the resort yacht. It was the most relaxing, gravy job she could wish for.<P>She was still very young, but not by a dancer's standards. And her performing experience thus far had been in rather commercial arenas that had never stretched her artistically or technically. The girl was reading the newspaper from the local town one day and saw an ad for a reporter. She had no experience or skill, but sensed that she needed a life change.<P>She applied by writing a piece for the publisher about her show biz experiences. At the bottom of her application were the words, "I'll work like a horse." Somehow, the girl was hired. She won a state award that year as the best columnist. Within a year, she became the first woman editor in the paper's 113-year history. She spent a number of years honing her journalistic skills.<P>But always, the voice of dance called, sometimes faintly. Sometimes loudly. If time and distance permitted, she would take class from the best schools she could find. But the days of ever considering herself a professional hoofer had long dwindled. <P>When she was 38, she saw Jimmy Connors (a year older than she) make it to the semi-finals of Wimbledon. She was moved to action. She began taking class again, this time in earnest, and against all odds. But this time she would do it for the joy of it. The school director liked her. She told her that she danced with serenity and intelligence. No one at college 20 years earlier had ever told her anything like that. And a funny thing happened -- without the pressure of having to prove herself in a highly critical environment, the girl improved quickly. Within a year, she auditioned for a troupe and was immediately accepted. At the same time, the girl knew that being a singer had been the edge she needed for this muli-talented troupe, and that she would have to work her butt off to keep up with these incredible dancers. These dancers were not particularly easy to win the approval of, either. The girl stuck with it, however, keeping her tears to herself in private. <P>After several years, her fellow dancers finally told her they admired her for sticking it out with them, particularly when she, unlike them, also worked at a full-time job. In her last of four years with them, she toured for a month with them in France. A mysterious virus overtook most members of the troupe, many of whom felt well enough to sight see and party, but who opted out of their work. The girl had a very strange feeling that this would be her swan song. She pushed through the virus and did not party or sight see, but instead fulfilled her performing obligation 100%, wanting her dancers and directors to have good memories of her. When, at tour's end, she announced this would be it, they said, "You can't go! You've worked so hard, and we finally like you." <P>But the girl held her ground. She wanted to leave performing while people still wanted her to stay -- that was the only way to go. She wanted to spend much more time teaching and nurturing in a way that she wished she could have received. "I want to be the teacher I never had," she avowed. <P>Two months after the girl arrived home, she learned she had cancer. She knew this was just another part of the life process. She received surgery and treatment and was out of class for a total of 10 days. What a pleasure it was to take class with no thought of rehearsal. To be able to take care of herself in a way she had forgotten how to do. <P>Dance helped her heal in profound ways. She knew she wanted to use this medium to help others heal. Although the girl had waited years to take her place in a profession at a time when most of her peers were bowing out, she knew she had just begun her relationship with dance, in all its incarnations. At this stage in her life, she is more philosophical than ever. She knows she cannot question why she didn't have a chance as a child to pursue this particular passion. She is just grateful that she will go to her grave with the peaceful satisfaction of having given it her all instead of saying "what if" or "poor me." And because she took that risk, she now allows herself one of those who can say they are "always a dancer."<P>Because it is more than sinew and muscle and arches and rotation. It is the very soul of a human being. <p>[This message has been edited by Christina (edited January 15, 2001).]
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